It’s RegularSis’s birthday today, but I didn’t call her. Here’s why:

So, I decided to take the girls to see my mother today. We’ve been here almost 2 years now, and we still hadn’t managed to ever visit Nana at HER PLACE, mostly because she moves a lot, so it’s been hard to keep up with her and all her condos and houses and whatnots that she rents. Usually after about 6 months of living in one place, she’ll decide that the neighbors are All Out To Get Her, or that there are BUGS coming through the ventilation system and biting her in the night, or that…

well… you get the idea. So, she moves a lot.

Anyway. I’d been trying to get on over to Nana’s New House for almost a month, and after two cancellations and working carefully over the phone with my mom to figure out a day that would actually work for all of us,  TODAY WAS THE DAY. There was no way I was gonna cancel this again. So, I piled the kids and some snack bags into the minivan and headed out by 11:00. For once, I was on time, and the kids weren’t fussing. The 2 days of rain had ended, and the sun was coming out and drying the world and making things look cheerful. Hell, I’d even managed to not only REMEMBER my cell phone, but to have charged it all night over night.

Not that I ever USE the damn thing.

As we were pulling out of the driveway, I looked in my mini-rearview mirror and said to my 5-year-old: “Honey, pull on that seatbelt until it’s nice and tight… it’s too loose” like I’ve said to her for months and months and months now, and she dutifully pulled on it until it was tight.

Maybe 15 minutes later, just as I was merging onto another road, another car slammed right into the back of my van, seemingly out of nowhere. KA-BLAM!!!!!!!!

You’ve been rear-ended before, haven’t you? You know what it sounds like, yes? That loud hollow KRUMP! The weird way in which you suddenly realize you’ve been jolted badly, even though it will be quite a few minutes before you realize that the rearview mirror is no longer hanging on the windshield but has come THIS CLOSE to clocking your kid in the forehead and now rests on the floor in between the kids’ seats behind you.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” my 8-year-old asked, as I was yanking the wheel over to the right, pulling over to the shoulder. “MOMMY? WHAT WAS THAT?”

“Someone hit us,” I said, “but WE’RE ALL RIGHT. Okay?” I looked around at the two of them. Their eyes were so big and round and stunned. “We’re OKAY, you guys,” I said again. Then, after considering for a moment, I asked them: “Are you okay?”

And they both started to cry.

After a little bit of soothing, I got out of the van and went around to the back, where a woman was waiting. She looked to be about in her late 50’s. We looked at each other for a few seconds, and then I said: “You okay?” She nodded. “We’re okay. You okay?” “Yeah, we’re okay.” and I stuck out my hand and said, “Shake?” and we shook. “You came out of nowhere,” she said to me. I’d been stopped at a stop sign. My van is not equipped with a cloaking device, so I’m pretty sure we were VISIBLE the entire fucking time, but WHATEVER. People say stupid things when they’re at fault in an accident. I didn’t correct her. I just let it slide.

Her husband had been driving and he was still surveying the damage over at his front end while I shook hands with his wife. He wandered over pretty soon. By now, I’d moved from the back of the van to the side and opened the door so the kids could see me. I called the police. Then I called RegularDad. All of this on my rarely-used, often uncharged and forgotten cell phone. I was still on the phone with RegularDad when the police arrived and I was trying to write down my insurance information with shaking hands all while balancing a cell phone in the crook of my (already aching) neck.

The kids had recovered from their fear by now, and the excitement was setting in. They’d unbuckled themselves and had crawled to the rear of the van. They were gaping out the back window at the crumpled car parked behind us and generally test-driving life as Kids Who’d Survived A Car Crash.

The cop took notes and told us what to do next. There were no serious injuries, and the damages weren’t bad enough that we couldn’t drive away. The couple who had hit us were on their way to a wedding, of all things, so they drove off pretty soon, promising to be in touch, and I pulled off into a parking lot, off the main road so I could make phone calls in peace. I called my mother, told her we’d been in an accident and that I wasn’t sure if we could come or not. The kids heard me say that and immediately began to wail. “We Wanna Go To Nana’s!!!!!!!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

So, I hung up with my mom, called RegularDad back, told him I thought we could still go on to Nana’s, so (sweet guy that he is) he drove over to us and traded cars with us. I called our pediatrician’s office because the girls had each said in passing: “Wow, my neck feels funny!” and talked to the nurses about it, and we made appointments for both girls for Monday morning. I’m torn between concern that I shouldn’t wait until Monday and relief that we don’t have to actually go into an Emergency Room. I hate Emergency Rooms. With all of my heart and soul.

We drove on to Nana’s house and arrived only two hours late. We had a late lunch, and then the girls looked at piles of old photographs of me and RegularSis from way back when. For some reason, I’ll never understand, my mother had saved some pictures of me with probably every boyfriend I ever had as a teenager, and those were peppered in among the shots of me and the dogs, me and the horse, me at graduation, etc, etc etc. “Who’s this?” my 8-year-old asked, holding up a shot of me and some old asshole boyfriend I used to date.

“Mom!” I said. “GROSS! Why do you still have these?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “This stuff was in storage for a while. I can’t remember what’s in there.”

I fielded quite a few cell phone calls all afternoon, from insurance people and RegularDad, and I was just starting to get tired and my neck was starting to complain even more, and I was ready to head back home when my mother said: “Hey, let’s take a drive into town!” “HOORAY!” the kids said, so I stifled my sighs and we all clambered into Nana’s car and headed on into town.

And suddenly, I was force-fed a trip down memory lane. That’s where the candy store was, that was our pizza place, and there’s the fountain but it’s closed up for winter, oh look the old theater’s still there, they just refurbished it because it was so moldy in there that people were getting sick every time they saw a show but it’s really nice now, and look! there’s the dry-cleaners where Aunt Susan used to work, remember that…

And I swear to God, the whole time she’s driving the car and pointing out landmarks, she’s simultaneously holding her cell phone with her right hand and flipping through her call history, looking for RegularSis’s new phone number. Because it was RegularSis’s birthday today (Hey, Happy Birthday RegularSis! Sorry I didn’t call you, but you wouldn’t fucking BELIEVE the day I’ve had!) and she thought we should call her to wish her a Happy Birthday. So, she’s driving down narrow, crowded streets and stamping on the breaks whenever another landmark from my crappy childhood comes up, and then after pointing it out, she steps on the gas again and turns her attention BACK TO HER CELL PHONE, and I’m sitting there in the front passenger seat (THE SEAT OF DOOM), not 6 hours out of an earlier car accident, asking myself: Oh for the love of God and All the Saints, IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING???

And then my 5-year-old said: “Aren’t there any toy stores around here?” and just as I was finished saying, “Hey! Christmas is two weeks away. The last thing you need today is new toys,” my mother said, “But there is a toy store here! A really great one!”

So we ended up in a toy store TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS where the kids took forever picking out a toy each because I’d imposed a $20 limit on them, and then I said to my mother JUST TO BE CLEAR: “Are YOU paying for this? Or am I paying for this?” because with Nana, you’re just never sure who’s picking up the tab.

She paid. She probably can’t afford it, but she paid.

So, after that, I told my mother that we really needed to get going, because RegularDad was waiting to take us all out to dinner. We were walking back towards the car, and the wind was picking up. It was cold. “Let’s just stop and see the Christmas tree lights!” Nana said, so we crossed to the square and ran through to where there was a tree with lots of colorful lights. “Pretty!” I said, “now, let’s go.”

“Doesn’t anyone want ice cream?” Nana asked. “Or coffee?”
“No,” I said. “Not today.”
“Who eats ice cream in THIS kind of weather?” my 8-year-old said, shivering.
“Mom, we’ll come back in the summer,” I said to her.
“Okay,” she said, and we trooped back to the car.

There was still a half hour of time left on the meter. “Well,” Nana said, “we’ll just have to sit here for another 30 minutes.” and she laughed a little at her little joke. But then, instead of starting the car, she spent a good 5 minutes digging through her purse, looking for God knows what.

“What are you looking for?” I asked her.

“My notebook,” she said. “I took it out in the store, when I was getting my money, and now I can’t…” and she trailed off, all while emptying the contents of her purse out into her lap. Then (mercifully), she held up a little book and said, “oh, thank goodness. Here it is.” and then she flipped through it, still looking for RegularSis’s phone number, but to no avail. “Mom,” I said, “we can call her later. We really need to get going.”

So, we started back to her house, but she took the long way back to show us the surrounding country side and her friend’s property, complete with horses and goats. It was getting dark by now, and I’d be driving back to Pennsylvania in the dark and in rush hour traffic, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Finally, we arrived back at her place. I rushed both girls from her car to mine and said a fast, fast goodbye, which means we were out of there in ten minutes — a personal record for us. Five minutes into the drive, I tried to dig through my purse one-handed to find my cell phone to call RegularDad to tell him we were late. But I couldn’t find it, and considering that we were in New Jersey and it’s illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving, I gave up. Two minutes later, my 5-year-old had a tantrum in the backseat because the toy she’d picked out didn’t have quite what she thought it did in the box. Forty-five seconds into that tantrum, I read her the riot act. The word “damn” made its way out into the air of the car. Things got quieter.

Suddenly my cell phone began to ring from somewhere in the depths of my purse. The word “dammit” floated out into the air as I groped for it again. I found it and managed to flip it open one-handed just as the last ring died away and the thing chirped out its signal that I’d missed a call.

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!” I yelled, at the top of my lungs.

Instant quiet in the back seat. The kind that makes you feel like the worst parent in the world.

I managed to call RegularDad back and told him we were late and started blowing off steam before I could even stop myself, and he said: “So, I guess we probably won’t go out to dinner then?” And I was beyond the ability to even think about dinner. All I could think about was getting across the God Forsaken Delaware River and home to where I wouldn’t  have to drive a car, or be in a car, for the rest of the day.

We made it back home without further incident, complaint or tantrum. We took the kids to a diner for dinner. I ordered a  Bacon Burger with Fries, A Pepsi, and Chocolate Ice Cream for dessert. I didn’t make the kids eat a single vegetable. I lingered over dessert.

We’re home now and it’s well after 9:00 and the kids are still up. And they’re watching television. Lots and lots of television.

And now that I’ve gotten this all out for you to read, I’m gonna go put the kids to bed, and I’m gonna go have a nice hot shower and then I’m gonna make myself some popcorn and watch whatever’s on.

Because this day is DONE, my friends.

Happy Birthday, RegularSis.

I’ll call you tomorrow.